The Top Hits of 1968 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Hey Jude

In the Beatles hit "All You Need Is Love", there's a line that goes "There's nothing you can do that can't be done". When it comes to Beatles music and "Hey Jude", I feel like saying "There's nothing that I can say that hasn't been said" about this hit. So, I'll just give you the raw data and you can just think about the enormity of this song at the time.

It topped the U.S. Charts on Sept. 28 and stayed there for nine weeks, as noted. In Canada, it hit Number One on Sept. 14 for seven weeks. In Australia, how about this... Number One from Sept. 28 to Jan. 10, 1969, a total of 15 weeks. The U.K.? Just two weeks at Number One starting on Sept. 14. "Hey Jude" was the first record they released on their own label, Apple, and the song was ousted from Number One in the U.K. by the second song released on the Apple label, Mary Hopkin's "Those Were The Days". I think that's way too ironic! Altogether, it's been reported that this record was Number One on the charts of 15 different countries and probably the Number One song of the year in most of them. Not the U.K. - the song deemed to be the biggest song for 1968 there was Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World", a song that couldn't even chart in the Top 100 in America! What a "whacky world" would describe these peculiarities!

Answer: Love Is Blue

All the other choices were also Number One hit instrumentals: "Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White" for Perez Prado in 1955, "Love Theme From 'Romeo And Juliet'" by Henry Mancini in 1969 and "Love's Theme" in 1974 by Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra.

Mauriat was born in France in 1925 to a family with a long lineage in classical music. He was destined to follow this path himself until he became enraptured with American jazz music in the early 1940s. Despite WWII, he formed his own orchestra in 1942 and started touring Europe. He caught the attention of Charles Aznavour who hired him to be his conductor/arranger. He carried on in that capacity for Aznavour and other French artists for over 20 years. His first big break occurred in 1962 when a song he had co-written in French, "Chariot", became a huge hit for Petula Clark in France. In 1963, the song was adapted to English and became a major hit for Little Peggy March - "I Will Follow Him". Then came this huge hit that was originally intended as Belgium's submission for the Eurovision Song Contest in 1963. He never had another big hit, at least in North America, but continued to tour and sell boatloads of albums around the world well into the new millennium. As of 2005, his last recorded CD was from a live concert entitled "Sayanora" released in 2003. Perhaps, as the title suggests, it was his swansong to the masses of his fans.

Answer: Honey

Bobby Goldsboro moved to Alabama to study music at Auburn University in the early 1960s. After his sophomore year, he was presented the opportunity to tour with Roy Orbison, quickly seized it and was on the road for three years from 1962 to 1964. He recorded one of his own compositions in 1964 that worked its way into the top 10, "See The Funny Little Clown", and he would ultimately release 11 top 40 songs over a ten-year period, none bigger than "Honey". Starting in the 1980s, Goldsboro got involved in the writing and production of kid's TV shows and continues working in that field with the new millennium.

The music and sentimental lyrics, maudlin to the song's critics, were written by Bobby Russell who wrote a number of big hits around that time, among them "Little Green Apples", "The Joker Went Wild" and "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia". He died of a heart attack in 1992 at the age of 51. In BMI's study of the most played radio songs of the 20th Century, "Honey" was number 25.

Answer: People Got To Be Free

Jerry Wexler, the president of Atlantic Records, had grave misgivings about releasing this record initially. Indeed, it was quite a departure for The Rascals following on the heels of their previous hits like "Good Lovin'", "Groovin'" and "A Beautiful Morning" and Wexler was concerned that the statement they were making with this record might run contrary to feelings of their fan base.

The Rascals insisted on its release since it espoused the values they held dear and years later, the band collectively agreed that it was the best recording they ever made.

It's conjecture now but perhaps Wexler was right. The group never had another top 20 hit and broke up by 1972. However, it's more likely that personal friction among the members, a drop off in the quality of their subsequent work and a conscious effort to make their music "jazzier" played a more significant role in their later lack of success than the message of this song.

Answer: (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay

Otis Redding and four members of his backing band, The Bar-Kays, perished in a plane crash on Dec. 10, 1967 just outside of Madison, Wisconsin. Three days earlier, he recorded this song for the Stax label and it may very well have gone unreleased had it not been for the diligent efforts of Steve Cropper, lead guitarist for Booker T & The MG's and co-composer of the song with Redding. Upon Redding's death, he returned to the studio and finalized the production work based on the track Redding recorded. Originally, executives at Stax were reluctant to release the record but when they heard it, they relented and by March 1968, it was Number One. BMI has concluded through their research that this was the 6th most played radio song of the 20th Century.

The whistling heard at the end of the song was not meant to be. Redding and Cropper were still working on a final verse for the song when the recording session was scheduled. Redding decided to whistle at the conclusion of the song and come back to the studio to record the final verse later once it was composed. Cropper wisely decided to leave the whistling in and it became a poignant and memorable conclusion to the song.

Answer: Love Child

From the first Supremes release in late 1963 up to 1968, all their hit songs (17 top 40s) were composed by the team of Holland-Dozier-Holland and virtually every one of them dealt with the tribulations of being in love, or losing love, or wanting love, or... well you get the idea.

In 1968, those writers left Motown records in a salary dispute and "Love Child" was composed by four other staff writers, one of whom was R. Dean Taylor, familiar as the artist who recorded "Indiana Wants Me" in 1970. These lyrics about growing up as a child born out of wedlock was a bit controversial at the time but the Supremes pulled it off.

It was the 11th and penultimate Number One song of their career.

Answer: Herb Alpert

Alpert first performed the song on a TV special "Herb Alpert and The Tijuana Brass" as a serenade to his wife. The public response to the song was so overwhelming that he was obliged to record and release it as a single. Alpert first entered the music business as a composer and producer in the 1950s.

In partnership with Jerry Moss, he founded the A&M record label in 1962 and created The Tijuana Brass to get the company some exposure. Their style of Mexican-Latin instrumentals proved very popular with the masses but more so as part of albums rather than individual releases. From 1962 through 1968, the group recorded 11 consecutive million selling LPs, six of which were Number One on the Billboard album chart. Over the same period, 20 singles made an appearance on the Hot 100 chart but only two cracked the top ten, the biggest their debut release, "The Lonely Bull", which peaked at Number Six. Alpert later became the first recording artist to have an instrumental Number One and a vocal Number One when his instrumental release "Rise" topped the charts in 1979.

Answer: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Montenegro began his musical career in the U.S. Navy during the mid-1940s arranging band scores. He went to College after his discharge then went to work as André Kostelanetz' staff manager with Columbia Records. He slowly moved up the ranks as a conductor/arranger for several of the label's artists, primarily Harry Belafonte in the mid-1950s, then recorded a series of easy listening LPs.

He moved to California in the early 1960s to begin his career writing film scores but strangely enough, this song was not one of his compositions - Ennio Morricone wrote it. Montenegro continued to write a number of movie scores and released several LPs right up to his death in 1981 but was never again able to match the success he achieved with this hit.

Answer: Sunshine Of Your Love

Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker formed Cream in mid-1966. All were splendid musicians feeling the need to showcase their considerable talents and despite not being particularly renowned at the time, having served their apprenticeships as sidemen in other groups, their formation gave rise to the term "supergroup". Only together for a couple of years, their output was understandably limited... five single releases that charted on the Hot 100, this song being their highest charting effort, and a similar number of studio album releases. But, in some circles, their stuff is legendary. Ultimately, following their split in 1968, Clapton went on to great fame as a solo artist and while the impact of Baker and Bruce was less notable, they too were actively engaged in exploring new musical horizons in the projects they pursued in the fields of rock, jazz and alternative music.

Answer: Woman, Woman

Gary Puckett left his home in Twin Falls, Idaho in 1966 and moved to San Diego to study psychology. He abandoned his studies a year later and after a brief stint with another group, put together the Union Gap complete with the civil war uniforms they ultimately became famous for.

They had a steady stream of hits in 1968 and actually, their releases outsold the Beatles that year. Their laid back style and the crooning of Puckett didn't stay popular for very long however, and when their efforts in the early 1970s barely made an impact on the Hot 100, they disbanded in 1971.

Answer: Judy

The song was "Judy In Disguise With Glasses". Altogether, John Fred and The Playboy Band released three disks - their first release entitled "Shirley" in 1959 struggled to reach Number 82 on the charts and their final entry, "Hey Hey Bunny" also in 1968, only did marginally better at Number 57. The song was a parody of The Beatles' "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" but whereas the Beatles' lyrics were ethereal and conjecture was that they alluded to images conjured up during an LSD trip, these lyrics were clearly "bubblegummy", hence the parody.

Fred dissolved the group in 1970 and thereafter, wrote jingles, did some record production and toured, both as a solo act and with various incarnations of The Playboys, mostly in his native Louisiana. He passed away in April 2005 of complications from a kidney transplant that he had a few months earlier.

Answer: Young Girl

This was Gary Puckett and The Union Gap's second release and although it ranked lower in this recap based on how the points worked out, it probably was their biggest selling and most popular hit. Jerry Fuller did the production work on the group's first four hits and also was this particular song's composer.

After "Woman, Woman", Fuller was contemplating what song the group should record next and wasn't particularly enamoured with any of the available alternatives. He had written the song some months earlier and thought it fit with the group's low key image.

He, himself, was a performer at one time and wrote the song about the groupies in their mid-teens who would hang around and become appealing to older band members who ought to know better!

Answer: Tighten Up

"Tighten Up" was originally recorded in 1967 shortly before Bell was drafted into the military and assigned to Viet Nam. He was a casualty of battle and recuperating in hospital when the song peaked at Number One for two weeks in May 1968. Prior to Bell's discharge in 1969, he was able to record with the band while on furlough and managed a couple of more successes. "I Can't Stop Dancing" charted at Number Nine and "Showdown" peaked at Number 21. Subsequent releases weren't as successful, at least on the pop charts, although a couple of their releases were hits on the R&B charts during the mid-1970s.

This particular group of Drells disbanded in 1979 but in the 1990s, Bell formed a new group of Drells and relocated to the East Coast becoming a fixture on the "beach music" scene with the new millennium.

Answer: Mrs. Robinson

Mike Nichols directed the movie and was eager to have Simon compose the soundtrack for it. Simon read the script and didn't think much of the movie's prospects but Nichols persisted. Finally, Simon relented. He initially threw in some older, traditional folk songs like "Scarborough Fair" and "April Come She Will" with intentions of writing new, original songs where those songs were placed in the script. Nichols liked them so much that they were left in the movie and Simon was happy since he really was struggling trying to create songs for a project he wasn't terribly committed to. Eventually, Mrs. Robinson was the only original piece of his work he would contribute to the score.

Originally, Simon had created the music long before the movie but was having a difficult time finding an appropriate lyric for the piece. It was at Garfunkel's suggestion that he added some parts of the lyric based on a character of the movie and after the movie was released, Simon went back to work and fleshed out the lyric for its release as a single. If one listens to the movie soundtrack and then the hit version, the differences between the two are immediately recognized. This was another of those most played radio songs of the 20th Century according to BMI's 1999 study - it was number seven.

Answer: Little Green Apples

O.C. Smith recorded the hit version, Roger Miller the countrified version. The down home style lyrics were written by Bobby Russell, the same fellow responsible for Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey" featured earlier in this quiz.

Smith originally started as a jazz vocalist and sang with the Count Basie band from 1961 to 1963 as Joe Williams' replacement. He dabbled in country music himself after leaving the Basie band and after his follow-up releases to this hit went nowhere on the pop charts, turned to an R&B style. If nothing else, he was versatile. In 1985, he founded his own church in L.A. and split his time between recording, performing and serving as minister to his flock until his passing at the age of 69 in 2001.

Answer: Wichita Lineman

This was Campbell's first big hit, a million seller. Prior to this song, Campbell had released 10 other records which managed an appearance on the Hot 100, the highest charting of those being "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" which reached Number 26 about a year earlier.

It would take several more years and 19 more single releases before he would reach the celestial heights of Number One, "Rhinestone Cowboy" in 1975. Webb was inspired to write this piece when he was motoring along the Kansas-Oklahoma border and spied a lone lineman working atop a telephone pole.

Answer: Those Were The Days

The song was originally composed around the start of the 20th Century and was adopted by Russian Gypsies. Versions were originally recorded in the 1920s in Russia and a Finnish artist, Annikki Tahtiand, recorded a version in 1950 in her native language. Early in the 1960s, Gene Raskin provided an English lyric to the music and apparently Paul McCartney heard Raskin and his wife perform the song in an English pub in 1965 and filed it away as something he'd eventually like to do something with. That opportunity came three years later with the formation of Apple records. Twiggy "discovered" 17-year old Mary Hopkin at a talent show, introduced her to McCartney and when he auditioned her, thought this song would be the perfect fit for her debut release. Right he was! Her follow-up release written by Lennon and McCartney, "Goodbye", charted a respectable Number 13 in 1969 but subsequent releases did not fare as well and she faded from view in America although she has maintained a reasonably high profile in the U.K. right up to 2005.

Answer: Classical Gas

It was a classical name for a classical song and Williams went on to win two Grammies for Instrumental Performance and Instrumental Composition for his work on this piece. Williams was multi-talented and devoted more of his time to pursue other interests than to playing guitar.

He was a staff writer for "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" and was largely responsible for Pat Paulsen's hilarious presidential campaign during the 1968 elections. He didn't win an Emmy for that effort but did win the award in 1967 and 1969 for the Outstanding Writing Achievement in Comedy, Variety and Music and was engaged in the writing of comedic material for many entertainment performers throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Beyond that, he has published several volumes of poetry and prose and has dabbled in artistic photography.

Answer: Hold Me Tight

Johnny Nash was not new to the entertainment world by any stretch, in 1968. Discovered by Arthur Godfrey as a 16-year old in 1956, he appeared destined for stardom early in his career - four Hot 100 entries, national radio and TV appearances and a couple of movie roles, all by the end of the decade. He was to be the new Johnny Mathis but when his pop and R&B recordings did nothing in the early 1960s, he was soon forgotten. While touring in Jamaica in 1967, he met Bob Marley and influenced by the indigenous ska and reggae music, turned his career around, at least for few years. He left the entertainment industry altogether in the 1980s.

One of the song choices I provided as an answer was "Roots, Rock, Reggae". Believe it or not, with all the famous songs that Bob Marley recorded that have become international reggae standards, "Buffalo Soldiers", "I Shot The Sheriff", "No Woman No Cry", to name but a few, "Roots, Rock, Reggae" was the only Bob Marley release to crack the Hot 100 - a lowly Number 51 in 1976!

Answer: Delilah

Overall, based on its chart performance, this song would be rated the seventh biggest of Tom Jones' long and illustrious career but I'd dare say it is now the song that he is most closely identified with. It sure was a good vehicle for him to display that powerful Welsh voice. Since his debut hit "It's Not Unusual" in 1965, Jones has had 30 of his releases chart in the Hot 100 but as of 2005, nary a one was a Billboard Number One.

He still remains a Las Vegas staple and popular concert performer in the new millennium.